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Tuesday, December 31, 2019

SEPTA Signaling Updates

I just compiled a few bits of signaling news after my recent SEPTA Winter fan trip and figured I should share them while they were still fresh. The the headline is that the work to rebuild or change ARSENAL interlocking is already having a negative impact on signaling as the 20 exit signal on #4 track at the north end of ARSENAL has already been replaced with what I assume is a temporary color light mast exit signal.


I say temporary because a few feet to the north some new turnouts had been installed either for an Amtrak connection (unlikely) or some sort of relocation of at least one of the Airport Line ladders off the curve where they currently exist.  Anyway, the 20 auto and southbound ARSENAL home signals are accessible for photography and a definitely work a hike in combination with the PLs at CP-WALNUT north of the University City station.


I finally got out to The SEPTA Norristown Line terminus at Elm St in Norristown and saw that SEPTA put a fair amount of money into the interlocking making all the switches power operated as well as adding power details.


Southbound signals were of the Unilens type, despite the signals well known problems. 



CTBC transponders have made an appearance on the Routes 101 and 102 suburban trolleys.  The existing ABS signaling system is a two aspect type with fairly long blocks, however after the trouble SEPTA had and continues to have in their downtown trolley tunnel I'm surprised they didn't consider just switching to some sort of light rail CTC.  I suspect they want to tie in light preemption and other goodies.




Anyway, those are the major changes I noticed.  Hope you had a reasonable 2019 and let's all look forward to a better 2020.

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Hot Stuff! Railroad Point Heaters and Snow Melters.

Railroads are normally pretty tolerant of ice and slow with even the snowiest lines through the Sierra Nevada or Rocky Mountains needing the use of specialized rotary snow ploughs only about once a decade.  However when rails need to move back and forth at the point of a switch, snow and ice can quickly gum things up and that is where the wonderful world of switch heating comes into play.  Despite there really being only two main heating methods and a handful of fuels, the solutions employed still show a fair bit of diversity, even within the railroads themselves.

SEPTA losing a bet on the necessity of point heaters at 16TH ST Jct.

 The two main methods of clearing the movable parts of switches are heating the rails directly or blowing hot air in and around them.  These two categories are then divided by the type of fuel beings used to do the job.  Currently the most common are electricity, gas (methane or propane) and kerosene. The decision of which point heating solution to use is typically based on the severity of the winter events any given interlocking is likely to encounter.  Erring on the side of caution may result in unnecessary maintenance and capitol expenditures.  On the other hand insufficient point heating capacity may not only fail in its intended role, but also succeed in making the problem worse.  Railroads may further adopt the use of snow plans where the use of top quality snow melting is restricted to certain locations with the remainder being straight railed and taken out of service for the duration of the snow event.


The most basic type of point heating solution is that of the smudge pot.  Named for an agricultural device designed to ward off the effects of frost, a railroad smudge pot is a long, flat metal tank holding 2-5 gallons of kerosene with a wick at one end.  Placed under the running rails and ignited, the open flame will heat the rail sufficiently to ward off snow and ice accumulation within a certain vicinity.


 Smudge pots can be left in place year round or deployed by maintainers in advance of a weather event.  Regardless of the placement, smudge pots must by lit and extinguished manually and are generally not used anywhere a switch needs to be in service during a significant snow/ice event. They also replaced the practice of igniting oil or other flammable liquids directly on the track structure, although that can still be used to free frozen points in an emergency.


 Moving up a notch in power, the electrically powered rail heater works in much the same fashion as a smudge pot, but without the need for on-site manual operation or fuel oil and with a significantly larger area of effect.  The hardware device could not be simpler, usually consisting of an electric-range style heating elements strapped along the length of the outer rail.


In the above example of an electric resistance point heater in operation, the water has evaporated along the entire length of the heating element.  When encountered in the nighttime the elements glow a cherry red, again similar to a household electric range.


Where heating elements on the outside rail prove insufficient, additional coils can be placed under the points themselves where the radiant heat would work to keep the mechanism clear.  One major drawback to electric contact point heaters is the somewhat limited amount of BTUs available.  A practically sized heating coil can only output so much heat and in extremes of temperature and precipitation and electric contact point heater will not only fail to melt the snow as it accumulates, but the snow that does melt may re-freeze between the ties and the points making mechanical clearance nearly impossible.


Electric heaters also require a fair amount of railroad and utility infrastructure.  Not only do the interlocking locations need a power supply with sufficient current available to power tens of feet of heating element, they also need additional cabling between the power supply and the switches themselves and in the long run high voltage electrical cabling in wet conditions can become a maintenance issue.


When the electricity supply either isn't available or isn't enough then it's time to break out the burner bars that apply a gas flame directly to the rail.  Generally impractical to use except on the outside rail, it was common to add an additional shroud to trap the heat around the rail, although these since fallen out of favor due to issues related to inspection or snagging equipment.  


The propane heaters shown above generally succeed in hiding the flame and and often create a whistling noise while in operation.  Some older installations that use municipal natural gas lines create more visible flames, sometimes to the alarm of passers by who think that something has gone wrong.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Blockstation.Net Goes Down

Another indispensable web 1.0 resource for those interested in Amtrak's NEC operations appears to have gone down in the last few weeks.  Blockstation,net was a small site dating from 1998 that published a set of 1992 vintage Philadelphia Division track diagrams that the site owner had made for Amtrak using MS Paint.  Covering then-CTEC Sections A, C/B, F and G, the site had some additional interior photos and information on a number of individual towers including PENN, BRWN MAWR, THORN, PARK, CORK, STATE, HARRIS and oddly enough, BALDWIN.

The good news for everybody is that I had saved hard copies of most of the informational parts of the site (at the time I didn't feel that the index pages needed saving).  This includes all of the diagrams and all of the tower pages with textual descriptions and detail photos. You can find this content here or here.


Let's all hope that the site returns.  On the pages I do have the author was listed as Ken Reinert who was using an Erols.com e-mail address that no longer functions. Like I said the page seemed to have been populated once back in 1998 and then completely left alone for the next 21 years.  For all I know the server it was running on may have been lost in some data center sort of like Milton from Office Space and some sysadmin may have simply rectified the error. it could be that poor Ken has passed away and the web hosting and/or domain name registration may have finally lapsed.

This is why I tell people that over the long run, the "cloud", is not reliable and that people need to make hard copies of everything they find important! With Yahoo Groups having been unilaterally wiped out just this past weekend, this is especially true as Web 1.0 content may be literally reaching end of life.  Fortunately I had saved this content way back in 1999 because then what was online was seen as fleeting and unreliable on a more relatable time scale. That means today in 2019 I just have to deal with another round of dead link fixing and instead of having to restore the lost content.

Monday, December 9, 2019

NS Fort Waye and Chicago Line News

In early December I traveled to Chicago via Amtrak's Capitol Limited, and while there isn't much going on after the great signal purges of the past few years I do have a few news items to report.  I previously reported on the replacement of CP-WOOD on the Fort Wayne Line.  This time around I can also confirm that the PRR signals at CP-LUM and CP-ALLIANCE were also replaced, apparently back in March 2019.  No word on the Conrail signals at CP-EON and CP-MURPH.  The CP-ALLIANCE signals in particular are a huge loss that I never got the chance to properly photograph save for one late night at 2am back in 2003 and all I came away with were night shots of the then new westbound NS style cantilever :-( 

Both of these interlockings were of mid-90's Conrail vintage and went in with the Rule 562 project and still had excellent paint jobs.  This appears to have been a signal replacement only, probably due to the lack of parts commonality.


In other news I can confirm that NS has retained some Conrail era signaling between CP-426 in Elkhart and CP-435 in South Bend on the Chicago Line.  This includes the MP 429 and MP 433 automatics and the westbound home signal at CP-435.


Back on the unfortunate side of things, Amtrak has replaced 10 of the 12 remaining (as of 3/19) US&S A-5 pneumatic point machines in Chicago Union Station's CP-ROOSEVELT complex.  Amtrak started to electrify the 4-ladder complete crossover a number of years ago, but stopped part way, possibly due to problems with the GM 4000 point machines originally selected.  Well now it seems the point machine replacement program is back on (this time with M3s) in conjunction with a general switch renewal project. CP-TAYLOR and CP-JACKSON are so far unaffected.

The double scissors in 2017 with 15 A-5 point machines.

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

A State Without Towers

The plight of the single interlocking tower is getting so bad that now we don't even have states without active interlocking towers, but states without any interlocking towers at all.  Closed, preserved or otherwise.  I'm not talking about states like Hawaii or Alaska or Wyoming either, but populous states like Florida which recently saw the demolition of its last free standing tower in early 2019.



As indicated by the video, TN Tower survived for 3 decades after being closed and even had a freeway built on top of it.  However someone somewhere in CSX got pissed off enough to call in the demolition crew and asbestos remediation folks.   Unfortunately it won't be long until this more states encounter the same situation :-(